Desert, by J. M. G. Le Clezio

Revisitation

A poem mentioned at book club, about the old Shiloh school:

The Bottoms, by Joe R. Lansdale

"The main concern of the fiction writer is with mystery as it is incarnated in real life."~Flannery O'Connor

"I had an interest in death from an early age. It fascinated me. When I heard 'Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,' I thought, 'Did he fall or was he pushed?'~P.D. James

"I abhor a mystery. I would fain, were it possible, have my tale run through from its little prologue to the customary marriage in its last chapter, with all the smoothness incidental to ordinary life. I have no ambition to surprise my reader."~Anthony Trollope

"I've always enjoyed crime fiction. I think that much of the best writing being done today is in crime novels. The plot and discipline essential to a crime novel save it from the terrible traps of being sensitive and stream-of-consciousness and all of that stuff."~John Mortimer

As we prepare to close out the reading year, Gem Meacham has done her part to make our penultimate formal book discussion one to be remembered for some time to come. That's because for first time in club history (hopefully not the last), we will have a seasoned author present to help us understand his book, and perhaps a bit of the process by which he arrives at his creations. That's right, gracing our lively conversation this month, will be local East Texas author, Joe R. Lansdale.

The meeting has a couple of new wrinkles. We thought dinner with the author would be nice, so the plan is to meet at 6:00 p.m. at Don Giovanni's, an Italian restaurant on White Oak Road, just around the corner from our house. Those wishing to join us can, but it's not required. We also thought it might be nice to cover the author's meal as well as pitch in to help defray the costs of gasoline, and his time for graciously agreeing to spend an evening with us. Purely on a voluntary basis, of course.

As mentioned, the year is hurtling to an end, which means now is the time for considering the entertaining, challenging, and thought provoking books that you might like to share next year. Indeed, if we all begin the arduous, exquisitely agonizing process of choosing our titles now, we stand a better chance of completing the list and the schedule by the November meeting or soon thereafter. So, get to it!

Gem, with the help of Joe Lansdale, presides on Tuesday the 15th. She also provided the questions in the attachment below. I believe this opens an exciting new chapter for our club, and have high hopes of having a poet in our midst in April. Congrats and thanks again to Gem, and we look forward to seeing everyone on Tuesday.

The Bottoms, won the Edgar Allen Poe award for best mystery novel in 2001--alternately called mystery fiction, suspense fiction and speculative fiction. 

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

The Lottery and Other Stories, by Shirley Jackson

"I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence."~George Eliot

"Once again I can climb about and remind you that a woman in this epoch does the important literary thinking."~Gertrude Stein

"I never appreciated 'positive' heroes in literature. They are almost always cliches, copies of copies, until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity, doubt, uncertainty, not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material, but because that is the way we humans really are."~Jose Saramago

Tuesday night brings us back to fiction with one of the most interesting of American female writers, Shirley Jackson. Brad Echols presides as we examine our annual collection of short fiction, as well as a banned book. Known worldwide on the strength of the endlessly anthologized "THE LOTTERY," Jackson was capable of an even wider range of subjects tones, and literary devices.

Brad provided the questions, so it is our job to provide acumen and wit to complement them! Let's get together for another of our signature literary discussions on Tuesday. Also, we can take the opportunity to discuss next month's visit with author Joe R. Lansdale. We want the meeting to be one worthy of Mr. Lansdales time and travel. All ideas will be appreciated. See you then.

Discussion Questions

Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath

"First I dream my painting, then I paint my dream."~Vincent Van Gogh

"Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers."~William Penn

"We have to believe in free will. We've got no other choice."~Isaac Bashevis Singer

Our (postponed) August meeting focuses on the interesting question of "what makes ideas stick?" Vickie Echols acts as tour guide to some of the research, theories, and practices of those who are pioneers in the psychology that surrounds that question.

In "Made To Stick," authors Heath and Heath have amassed an impressive array of stories, examples and exercises for enhancing the ability to create and/or discover ideas that at their core are hard to forget. Ideas that, because of the way in which they are presented are, for lack of a better word, "Sticky."

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell

"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."~William Blake

"The intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups...Literary intellectuals at one pole--at the other, scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf of incomprehension."~C.P. Snow

"Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, all flock to their aid."~Ralph Waldo Emerson

This month's meeting centers on things that lie outside the norms that constitute mundane existence, hence the title of our book chosen by Dick Smith: Outliers. Authored by popular cultural commentator Malcolm Gladwell, the book seeks to explain hidden forces and conditions that foretell success for some, as well as failure for others. Through his gift for putting individual lives into a context which may not be readily visible to us, Gladwell makes success in everything from computer science to professional hockey seem not only logical, but inevitable.

It all proves to be a fascinating look into the very components of our lives that determine success, or the lack of it. It is also a meditation on the elements of opportunity, place, and time that aren't always considered when we seek to explain the Warren Buffetts, Bill Gates, and Robert Oppenheimers of the world. This will no doubt turn out to be one of the liveliest discussions of the year. The questions below were provided by Dick, who presides Tuesday night. See you then.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, by Charles Yu

“I hate these time travel incidents. The past is the present. The present is the past. It all gives me a headache”~Captain Kathryn Janeway, Star Trek “Voyager” Television Series

"Science Fiction is a kind of archaeology of the future."~Clifton Fadiman

"I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labelled 'Science Fiction'....and I would like out, particularly since so many critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal."~Kurt Vonnegutt

James Harold presides Tuesday night with a book that is clearly up to some inspired mischief. How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, by Charles Yu, from its title and first page announces itself as perhaps one of the most bizarre literary journeys this or any book club will be making for the foreseeable future (so to speak).

Through mind bending flights of fancy that manage to sound convincingly like some pretty serious science, the author gives a bravura performance certain to delight as well as confound. In the telling a story of familial disintegration and oddly enough redemption, emerges. A literary feat if ever there was one.

James provided the questions below. I think we can look forward to a rousing conversation about time, loyalty, relationships, physics and love on Tuesday. We look forward to the discussion and to your good company.

Discussion Questions

A Visit To Civilization, by Sandra McPherson

"Poetry is to prose as walking is to dancing."~John Wain

"When in public poetry should take off its clothes and wave to the nearest person in sight; it should be seen in the company of thieves and lovers rather than that of journalists and publishers."~Brian Patten

"Poetry cannot afford to lose its fundamentally self-delighting inventiveness, its joy in being a process of language as well as a representation of things in the world."~Seamus Heaney

As we do every year at this time, we join the rest of the nation in celebrating the world of poetry. I chose the beautiful, yet challenging poetry of Sandra McPherson as an opportunity to stretch ourselves into areas of modern poetry that we may not have explored.

A Critique of: A Visit to Civilization

In anticipation of the April meeting, I thought we could share are research on Sandra McPherson, who admittedly, may be one of the most accomplished, though difficult poets to be placed on our list in a while. I've forgotten where I found the following on the internet, but If I share other critical finds on McPherson, I'll be sure to also make available all such relevant material. As a lover of poetry, I have also developed an appreciation for those specialist in the field who are adept at elucidating the work of our poets for greater appreciation of their skill. Hope you'll join me this month in seeking out our best critics of poets and their work.

Durren

A Beautiful Place To Die, by Malla Nunn

"Murder itself is not interesting. It is the impetus to murder, the passions and terrors which bring it to pass and the varieties of feelings surrounding the act that make a sordid or revolting event compulsive fascination. Even the most ardent readers of detective fiction are not much preoccupied with whether a Colt Magnum revolver or a Bowie knife was used to dispatch the victim. The perpetrator's purpose, the 'why', is what impels them to read on. They need to find out what has gone on his head, whether revealed through action, dialogue, mental activity or the stream of consciousness. They need to follow what goes on in the minds of others who come within his range, observe him, fear him, or suffer at his hands."~Ruth Rendell

"If you want to show the violence that lives behind the bland faces that most of us present to the world, what better vehicle can you have than the crime novel?"~Julian Symons

"By the end he only read novels that began with 'A shot rang out'.~Martin Amis (of his father, Kingsley Amis)

Huey Mitchell serves up one of the more interesting police procedurals that has come along in a while. Set in South Africa in 1952 at the dawn of that country's disastrous embrace of Apartheid, A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO DIE by Malla Nunn, proceeds to break new ground for the genre. The author's treatment of race, gender, sex, nationalism and morality sets it apart from conventional detective stories. It goes where others fear to tread, and does it with flare.

In most crime novels we expect the perpetrator to have a thing or two to hide. In this well paced yarn, it seems everyone is hiding something, including the chief investigator! It proves in the telling to be more than a question doing justice to the killer of one man, but to those holding a knife to the neck of innocence itself.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

The State Of Jones, by Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time By Mark Haddon

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
By Mark Haddon
Discussion led by T. Taylor

"[Our protagonist is] a literalist by neurology." Debbie Lee Wasselman

"The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes." the literary character Sherlock Holmes

Hello book mavens,

The time is upon us when we look with excitement to the coming year of book club titles chosen by eleven intrepid members of the group. Perhaps bravest of all is Trudy Taylor, who not only volunteered to monitor the first discussion, but chose a most unusual story and narrator for our consideration.

Highly regarded and much discussed since its publication in 2004, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time draws us into the strange mindscape of one Christopher John Francis Boone, a mildly autistic 15 year old British subject bent on discovering the identity of the person (or persons) responsible for the death of a neighborhood dog named Wellington. What ensues may be one of the oddest gumshoe yarns written in English in the past century.

So, it seems we'll kick off the reading year in enjoyable, if bizarre fashion with a fiction designed to give us a new perspective on the anomalies of the human brain and what they can mean for communities and families encountering them.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

2013 Book Club List

Hallelujah,

It has taken a pinch of cajoling, and a modicum of nagging, but at last the 2013 book club list is complete! As always, all months (except April, February, and September) can be shuffled. Those needing to switch should move ASAP to horse trade with other discussion leaders over changes. Thanks to all for their interesting recommendations. Here's the list:

January - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon - Trudy Taylor

February - The State Of Jones, by Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer (Nat'l Black History Month) - Jonna Anderson

March - A Beautiful Place To Die, by Malla Nunn - Huey Mitchell

April - A Visit To Civilization, by Sandra McPherson (Nat'l Poetry Month) -Durren Anderson

May - How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, by Charles Yu - James Harold

June - Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell - Dick Smith

July - The Plague, by Albert Camus - Jay Noble

August - Made To Stick, by Heath & Heath - Vickie Echols

September - The Lottery and Other Stories, by Shirley Jackson (Nat'l Banned Books Month) - Brad Echols

October - The Bottoms, by Joe R. Lansdale - Gem Meacham*

November - Desert, by J. M. G. Le Clezio - Paul Cronemeyer